


eager eye and willing ear

by graveExcitement



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Dimension Travel, Gen, The Magnus Archives Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27340624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveExcitement/pseuds/graveExcitement
Summary: Gerry investigates a paranormal mirror and is pulled into another universe, one where Jon has just burned his page.
Relationships: Gerard Keay & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 26
Kudos: 119
Collections: Fic In A Box





	eager eye and willing ear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).



> Title from Lewis Carroll's [A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43907/a-boat-beneath-a-sunny-sky).

End or Spiral?

That was the main question running through Gerry's mind as he examined the ornate mirror he'd tracked down in an old country home. Did it belong to the End, or the Spiral? 

Most of his expertise lay specifically in Leitners, not paranormal objects in general, but this mirror was pretty clearly not normal; his reflection in it was significantly paler (a feat in and of itself), washed-out, and translucent. Distorted reflections was a classically Spiral description, but the Gerry in the mirror looked human enough aside from the transparency. The other Gerry was paler, though, and looked bone-tired... and there were faint Sanskrit tattoos visible on his skin. It was this detail that filled Gerry with dread, and provided the most evidence for this being an artifact of the End.

It was probably just reflecting his own fear of the skin book, he reasoned. That didn't mean it was accurate; either way, it couldn't be trusted.

The Gerry in the mirror suddenly stiffened, breaking the charade of a reflection, and Gerry took a step back. Mirror Gerry's shoulders then slumped in what looked like relief, and Gerry noticed flames licking away at his other self. The flames climbed higher, and Mirror Gerry mouthed something that looked like "Thank you." Soon the flames consumed him, and the mirror now reflected no one at all.

Gerry frowned. "Well, which is it? Do I get put in that fucking book, or does the Lightless Flame get me?" Honestly, after how many books he'd burned, the Desolation ought to throw him a bone —

It was at that moment that the mirror abruptly reflected somewhere else, a room Gerry grimly recognized as the Magnus Institute's Artefact Storage. Was it reading from his memories somehow? That was unsettling. 

Well, now that he had found the damn thing and confirmed it was paranormal, all that remained was trying to figure out how to destroy it. Breaking the glass was the easy answer, but some things were more dangerous when broken, and the superstition of breaking mirrors being bad luck might have some weight to it. There was no need to stand right next to it while figuring this out, so he turned to put some distance between him and it.

As his gaze finally left the mirror, he realized he was no longer standing in an old, dusty bedroom. He was standing in Artefact Storage.

God dammit.

He turned back to the mirror, but it just innocently reflected Artefact Storage back at him. Was this a Spiral artefact after all, messing with his senses, or did it actually transport him here?

"Suppose it could be both," he muttered, turning away from the mirror once more and pulling out his phone. He dialed Gertrude, but was met with a dial tone. Ugh. She'd sent him looking for this thing, the least she could do was pick up the phone when it ate him.

There was nothing for it. If by some chance he was actually in Artefact Storage, he needed to leave before anything else in the room ate him, and as a bonus he could drop by the Archives, where hopefully he could find Gertrude. There was very little cell service down there, so maybe she even had a good excuse. And if the mirror was tricking him and he was still in the old house, he probably couldn't hurt himself too bad stumbling around in there.

Hopefully. If he hadn’t been swallowed by the Distortion.

He snuck out of Artefact Storage, which was easier than he'd expected due to the entire department being empty of people. If his phone was to be trusted, it was seven pm, which would explain the lack of personnel. It took him a minute to get his bearings, since he didn't hang out around Artefact Storage nearly as much as the Archives (though he'd been in a few times to nick Leitners and surreptitiously burn them), but soon he found his way down to the basement. If this was the Spiral's work, it was a very fucking convincing replica of the Institute's architecture. In a way, it would be more of a relief if he saw something noticeably off; then he would at least know that he couldn't trust his senses. Maybe that was why it was keeping up the perfect charade. 

He was about to open the door to the Archives when he realized that there were voices on the other side. Now that was odd. No one should be giving a statement at this hour, so it must be one of Gertrude's associates. Or her boss, he thought with a grimace. He strained his ears, but couldn't make out what was being said. It sounded like multiple people, though... and none of them sounded like Gertrude.

He could bide his time and wait until they left, but fuck it. This might not even be real anyways. He opened the door and, damn, he didn't think he'd ever seen this many people in the Archives at once before.

At one of the desks, two women, one with close-cropped blonde hair and the other in a hijab, appeared to be cleaning their handguns. Not that Gerry thought Gertrude was against firearms, but the blonde woman staring him down looked like a Hunter, and those could be dangerous friends to have. Nearby, a handsome man had his feet up on a desk, and he was staring at Gerry, half angry and half bewildered. Round scars were scattered across his skin; he'd clearly had an encounter with the Corruption, though Gerry looked closer and he didn't seem to be infested, thankfully. Across the room, a woman with blue hair paused her rapid-fire typing at her laptop and narrowed her eyes at him.

Yeah. This definitely wasn't the Archives he was used to.

He stood there in the doorway, feeling the weight of the strangers' stares, when a large ginger man rounded the corner from deeper within the Archives, bearing a tray of tea, and abruptly came to a stop. The man squinted at him for a moment, before finally sputtering, "Aren't — Aren't you Gerard Keay?"

"That's me," he said.

"What the fuck?" said the handsome man. "Isn’t he supposed to be dead?"

"Uh," said Gerry. "No?"

"I'll get Jon," said the ginger man, turning towards the Archivist's office.

"No," said the handsome man, eyes narrowing. "No, this is a trap. It's the night we leave, and 'Gerard Keay' shows up out of nowhere? How'd he even get into the building?"

"Well, if it is him, he'd probably be capable of breaking in," said the ginger man, quite reasonably in Gerry’s opinion.

"It's a Stranger and we can't trust it," the handsome man spat.

"Look," the woman in the hijab broke in, "let Martin get Jon. He'll be able to get the truth out of him." Beside her, the blonde woman started casually putting her gun back together. Subtle. The woman in the back with blue hair reached for something underneath her desk, and now that Gerry looked closer, she was definitely marked by the Slaughter. 

The ginger man, Martin, put the tea tray down on a nearby box and knocked on the Archivist's door. "Jon?" he called, cracking open the door. "There's a bit of a situation, could you...?"

Gerry watched with keen eyes as the Archivist, Jon apparently, shuffled out of his office. He was a short, brown-skinned man with bedraggled dark hair, streaked with silver. And yikes, those scars. Half a dozen Entities had to have marked him, the unlucky sod. He looked exhausted, up until his eyes met Gerry's, at which point he gaped openly, eyes wide.

"Gerry?" the Archivist whispered.

He frowned. "How do you know..."

"Ask him whether he's really Gerard Keay," said the blonde woman.

The Archivist blinked for a moment before jerking his head in an approximation of a nod. He turned the full weight of his gaze on Gerry, and asked, voice laden with compulsion, _"Are you the real Gerard Keay?"_

"Yes," he said.

_"Are you human?"_

"Yes."

Jon appeared to flounder at that point, and the woman in the hijab suggested, "Ask him who he works for and if he means us any harm."

He did so, to which Gerry answered, "I work for myself, but I sometimes work with Gertrude Robinson" and "No," respectively.

"Ask him if he has any association whatsoever with the Stranger," the handsome man said.

The Archivist repeated his question, and Gerry replied, "None, except I burned a Stranger book once."

That seemed to conclude the interrogation, and most of the room seemed to decide to ignore him, which was a step up from getting shot on suspicion of being a Stranger, so he'd take it. The Archivist alone stared at Gerry, hands fluttering nervously.

Gerry sighed. "Why don't I give you my statement?"

“Yes,” said Jon, accepting the cup of tea Martin silently pushed into his hands, “I think that would be best.”

So Gerry followed Jon into his office. He detailed how Gertrude had sent him to investigate a mirror that was supposed to distort one’s reflection, which wouldn’t have been all that concerning… except that there had also been a few incidents where bodies had been found in front of the mirror. He went over his own experience, from hunting the thing down to examining it to finding himself in Artefact Storage. As he finished up, Martin ducked into the room and set a cup of tea in front of him before quietly making his exit again.

He took a sip; it was good. Usually he stuck to coffee. “I’ve got a few questions of my own,” he said. “You called me Gerry, as if you knew me. Why?”

“You told me to,” Jon said. He was looking more alive, after the statement. “You said you’d always wanted your friends to call you Gerry. But the Gerry I met was already dead.”

“The skin book,” Gerry guessed.

“Yes. But existing like that, it was painful. You told me to burn your page, and I kept my promise. Just now. About ten to fifteen minutes before you entered the Archives.”

That was when he’d seen his reflection go up in flames. “You think the mirror took me here the moment you burned it.”

“I think so, yes, or just after. The ashes vanished less than a minute after the burning, so to be more precise, I think that was when it happened.”

“An exchange,” Gerry mused. “So maybe my ashes are on the floor of the country house right now. If so, maybe the other victims weren’t killed either, just swapped with their own corpses.”

“Hmm,” said Jon. “I have a few follow-up questions. What’s today’s date?”

“August 4th, 2017.”

“Same as here, then. Did you ever fall ill in 2014?”

“No?” He frowned. “I mean, I might have had a cold or something, but nothing serious. Is that what took me out? Illness?”

“A brain tumor,” Jon confirmed. “You died while travelling in America with Gertrude, and she bound you to the catalogue of the trapped dead. She died about a year after you did; Elias murdered her. But none of that happened, where you come from.”

Gerry shook his head, thoughts whirling. “Alternate universes. That’s where you’re going with this, right?”

“It’s actually not completely unprecedented,” said Jon, and he was beginning to sound excited. “Statement #0092204, I read it just recently. The statement giver, Anya Villette, claims to have been dragged into the cracked foundation at Hilltop Road, and when she woke up she was two weeks in the past and none of her friends knew her. There’s no evidence she exists at all. Which also means there’s no concrete evidence that she really time travelled or comes from a different universe, but it raises some interesting possibilities.”

“Hmm,” said Gerry. He seemed to have gotten the better end of the deal, between him and this universe’s Gerry. Gertrude binding him to the skin book, though… that rankled. He wished he could attribute it to this being a different universe, but he found the idea of his own Gertrude binding him all too plausible, if she knew how. And the brain tumor; did he not have one, or was his just taking longer to kill him? He could get it checked out, now that he knew about the possibility, but would it be too late?

To distract from those questions, he asked about something else. “So why are you and your assistants working so late?”

Jon jumped a little. “Oh! Right, yes. We’re actually, well, we’re actually preparing to stop the Unknowing. We’re going to leave tonight. I don’t suppose you have any advice? The other Gerry didn’t know much, but he also died earlier,so.”

Gerry frowned. “It’s that soon? Gertrude made it sound like we still had months, if not years.”

“She may have been able to delay it for longer than we delayed ours,” Jon offered.

He shook his head. “No, we haven’t gone after the Circus in months, and she’s been secretive for weeks, I just didn’t think… damn it! It’s happening now, and she just sent me on a wild goose chase to get me out of the way.”

“Maybe she wanted to protect you,” said Jon. “I know she had a habit of sacrificing people to stop the Rituals. Michael Shelley, Jan Kilbride —” He stopped for a moment. “How did I know… never mind. The point is, maybe she decided she didn’t want to do that to you.”

He snorted. “What, you think she got soft in her old age? Did you ever meet her?”

“No, I can’t say I did. I did hear about how ruthless she was — from you, among others — so your skepticism is warranted. I just thought it was a potential explanation.”

“I guess,” said Gerry. It didn’t seem likely, but something about his first assumption, that Gertrude had decided he’d be a liability, didn’t sit right either. Sure, he might be a dead man walking, if he had a tumor waiting to kill him. But even if she knew, he thought that would make her more likely to use him rather than less, since he was going to die soon anyway. What the hell was she up to?

Jon coughed. “Our plan is, essentially, blow it up once it’s started. Gertrude helpfully left behind some supplies in that regard.”

“Classic Gertrude plan.”

“Quite.”

Gerry drummed his fingers on the desk. “If that was her plan, why didn’t she bring me in? I could plant explosives, easy. Shutting me out doesn’t make sense. Is she gonna blow it up by herself? I mean, she’s a badass, but seriously?”

“Well, she might be working with Leitner, if he’s still alive in your universe, but I’m not sure why she would expose him for this if she could ask you instead.”

He stared at Jon. “Fucking what.”

“O-oh, right, you wouldn’t know. Jurgen Leitner lived for years in the secret tunnels underneath the Institute, and Gertrude was working with him. But from what he said, he didn’t like to leave the tunnels, so I don’t think he would have unless it was absolutely necessary.”

“Secret tunnels.” Gerry rubbed a hand across his face. “God dammit. She joked about that once. Guess the joke was on me.” And Leitner. Fuck. “She really didn’t trust me, huh? I knew that, and I couldn’t fully trust her either, but…”

“I suppose after a life like hers, she may not have trusted anybody.”

“Mm. Hey, do you know where Leitner is now? My fist has an appointment with his face.”

“I’m afraid I, ah, got him killed. Elias’ doing. But if it helps, I believe you already did make that appointment some years ago, if your history is similar to that of my universe’s Gerry. If so, you likely let him go because he was ‘too pathetic to be Leitner.’”

“That was him?” Gerry groaned. 

“I’m afraid so.” Jon twirled a pen around his fingers. “I admit I’m curious as to what your Gertrude’s plan for the Unknowing is. If she was sticking to explosives, why wouldn’t she include you? But she lived several years longer than the Gertrude here did, so perhaps she had time to come up with a different plan.”

“I guess. It didn’t seem like she was doing anything, though. For all I could tell, she wasn’t making any preparations at all. But she was also hiding secret tunnels and _Jurgen Leitner_ , so what the hell do I know?”

There was a knock on the door, and the woman in the hijab peeked in. “I’m sure this is fascinating, Jon, but shouldn’t we get going? Everyone else is ready.”

“Right, yes, sorry.” Jon shot Gerry an anxious smile. “What will you do now? I’m afraid I don’t know how one would go about making the mirror reverse its effects, and we don’t have time to investigate now, but you may feel free to conduct your own research here, if you wish.”

Reverse the mirror’s effects? Gerry frowned, thinking. If it was easy as looking in the mirror again, he suspected they would have found less bodies. It was still the obvious thing to try. If that failed, he could already tell that Jon’s Archives were more organized than Gertrude’s, so he at least had a chance of finding a relevant statement or two. And then what?

Gertrude didn’t trust him. He could confront her with the tidbits of her secrets he’d heard from Jon, but what would that do, really? Her plans didn’t include him. He could cut ties, head off on his own again. Get his brain scanned for a tumor that might or might not already exist and be on the verge of killing him.

He looked at Jon. The man was… soft, really. Clearly anxious, scarred to hell and back, but he was preparing to try and save the world. He trusted Gerry more than Gertrude did, and he’d known him for a fraction of the time. The other Gerry had liked him, too. Had asked him to call him Gerry, even.

“Do your apocalypse-cancelling plans have room for one more?”

Jon blinked at him owlishly. “I — yes, I suppose. Are you sure?”

He shrugged. “They’re still attempting the Unknowing back home. At least this way I can try and help stop it. It’s not like I’ll be missed.”

“Okay,” Jon whispered. He cleared his throat. “I’d best introduce you to the team, then.” He stood up, and several of his joints audibly popped. (Gerry winced in sympathy.) He gestured Gerry out the door, and they left the office.

Jon cleared his throat to catch everyone’s attention. “This is Gerry Keay,” he said. “From an alternate dimension. The one from our dimension is dead. He wants to help with the Unknowing. Gerry, this is Martin, Tim, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie.” He pointed at each person in turn. “Any questions?”

“Just one,” said Tim. “What the fuck?”

“Cursed mirror brought me here,” Gerry said. “It’s up in Artefact Storage if you want to take a look.”

“That’s very Star Trek, isn’t it?” said Martin. “Mirror universe and whatnot?”

“Well, I’m not Evil Gerry or anything,” he said. “Just not-dead Gerry.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “And you want to help out of, what, the goodness of your heart?” 

“I’m not keen on living in the Stranger’s nightmare world, thanks,” said Gerry. 

“Enough chatter,” Daisy decided. “Let’s move.”

* * *

The three hour drive up to Great Yarmouth was quiet and tense. Jon occasionally turned to Gerry, on the verge of saying something, before glancing at the others and thinking better of it. Gerry was beginning to get the impression that this frostiness wasn’t just due to his last-minute inclusion.

It was quite late by the time they reached the arranged bed-and-breakfast. They had two rooms; Daisy and Basira took one room, leaving the other one for Jon, Gerry, and Tim. Before they turned in for the night, Basira ordered that no one leave their room alone. (“Especially not you, Jon. We don’t need you getting kidnapped again.”) 

The three men surveyed their room for the night. It had two beds, at least. “Right, I’m gonna shower,” said Tim. “Try not to summon anyone from other universes while I’m gone.”

“I hardly _summoned_ him,” Jon muttered, though Tim had already shut the bathroom door behind him.

Gerry smirked. “Well, you burned the other-me’s page at the right moment, so in a way, you did.”

“I suppose so.” He frowned. “I do apologize, for what it’s worth. You certainly didn’t ask to be taken here…”

“It was a _joke_ , Jon.” When this spurred no reaction, he added, “Look, I was the one meddling with the cursed mirror. This isn’t on you, okay? Besides, I’ve got better company here.”

This earned him a shy smile. Then Jon began to pace. Gerry settled into the chair in the corner and watched, wishing he had a cigarette, or maybe a cup of that tea Martin had made back at the Institute.

“I still don’t understand why Gertrude would shut you out,” Jon said after a few minutes. “She included you in her research into the Unknowing until your death in 2014, and presumably longer for you. Most of her other assistants and associates that I know of are dead, unless some are alive in your universe that aren’t in mine. Jurgen Leitner’s probably still alive, since she wouldn’t have gotten him killed like I did, but there’s no reason I can think of why she would prefer his assistance to yours. Unless she really didn’t want you to get hurt?”

“She didn’t worry too much about that a few years ago, when we went to stop the Extinguished Sun,” Gerry said.

Jon snapped to look at him so fast, Gerry thought he’d probably pulled something in his neck. “The Extinguished Sun?”

“The Dark’s ritual.”

“When was this? The other Gerry didn’t mention it in his statement.”

“I mean, yeah, he died in 2014, right? This was March 2015; we spent most of that month hunting down churches. The ritual’s apex was on the 20th, that’s when Ny-Ålesund had its eclipse — what?” Jon’s eyes had gone wide.

“That’s, that’s when Gertrude died,” Jon said. “I think, no, I Know that’s the date. March 20th, 2015.”

Gerry blinked. “And you’re sure Elias killed her, not the People’s Church?”

“I’m positive.” 

“Then she can’t have been the one to stop the Extinguished Sun here. Not unless Elias followed her to Ny-Ålesund, waited for her to stop it, then offed her.”

Jon shook his head. “Her body was found underneath the Institute. And there’s statement #0151403; it was given March 14th, and the statement giver mentions seeing Gertrude in the other room as he writes down his statement, so she was hardly going after the People’s Church herself. That was the statement about predicting Gertrude’s upcoming death in a dream, so I’m guessing he didn’t give it in your universe.”

“Not sure if I’d have seen it if he did. But from what you’re saying, Gertrude can’t have been the one to stop the Extinguished Sun. It doesn’t sound like she even… tried.”

Jon and Gerry stared at one another for a minute. Then Jon resumed his furious pacing. “Obviously the Dark’s ritual didn’t come to pass, because the sun’s still there. Gertrude didn’t stop it, and Elias can’t have bothered either, as he was too busy killing her. Not to mention I think that would be too ‘hands on’ for him. Could someone or something else have stopped it? Like the Slaughter avatar did to the Stranger ritual in 1787.”

“Maybe,” said Gerry. “But I think mostly other avatars leave it to Gertrude, you know? She’s been doing this for decades, and she never gave me any indication that we could expect help. Peter Lukas agreed to ferry us to Ny-Ålesund, but that was about it.”

Jon nodded. “That matches my experience as well. The Distortion, when it was Michael, it gave us a tip that helped us defeat Jane Prentiss, but it hardly stepped in when she attacked. And even if someone else handled the Extinguished Sun, it doesn’t explain why, in your universe, Gertrude doesn’t appear to be doing anything about the Unknowing. She dedicated her life to stopping these rituals and she just stops caring? It doesn’t add up. Not unless she could somehow stop them…”

“...without lifting a finger,” Gerry finished.

Jon’s eyes widened. “She didn’t stop the Extinguished Sun in my universe because she didn’t have to! She _died_ and the ritual still failed.”

“And in mine, she’s not doing anything about the Unknowing. She expects it to fail on its own.”

“If it was just the Extinguished Sun, it could be a fluke, but this, this is a pattern. Gertrude discovered that the rituals don’t work. And she was right, because we’re not living in a nightmare apocalypse of darkness right now.”

“What does that mean for us?” said Tim. Jon nearly jumped out of his skin — ouch, bad metaphor this close to the Stranger’s den — and whirled around.

“How long were you there?” Jon asked, breathless.

“Long enough. Now answer my question.”

“Right. Well. Two separate instances of Gertrude Robinson decided she didn’t need to do anything in order for a ritual to fail, and these were two different rituals, the Dark’s and the Stranger’s. She probably had more knowledge about rituals in her little finger than the rest of us have combined, except maybe Elias…” He sucked in a breath. “Elias has to know. He killed her on the day of the Dark’s ritual, he had to know they were attempting one and that Gertrude wasn’t interfering. Sending us after the Unknowing, it’s a trap.”

Tim swore. 

“Quite. We… should probably bring in Basira and Daisy.”

* * *

“And you’re certain of this?” Basira asked again. She’d been sleeping, apparently, while Daisy took watch, so it had taken her a little longer to get up to speed. Now her eyes were eagle-sharp. “If you’re wrong, it’s the whole world at stake.”

“No other theory adds up,” said Jon.

“So, what?” said Tim. “We just go home? The Circus’ ritual fails and we don’t have to care? They still hurt people, Jon. Ritual or no ritual, they shouldn’t get off scot free.”

“Monsters need killing,” said Daisy.

Jon gnawed his lip, glancing between them. “We could still go on with the plan,” he said slowly. “Only, we don’t have to be sure that the ritual’s started before we detonate. That was the riskiest part anyways, based on the 1787 ritual and Gertrude’s comments.”

Tim nodded, looking satisfied for the first time. “We go in, plant the bombs, get out, blow it to hell. Got it.”

“Sounds good,” Daisy said. “Work for you, Basira?”

“I still think we should at least try to detonate during the ritual, if we can. But this seems less likely to end the world than just ignoring it.”

“Then we’re agreed,” said Jon. “Barring any other revelations, I believe we can get some sleep.”

Daisy and Basira filed out of the room, and Tim flopped onto one of the beds. “You summoned him, you can share a bed with him,” he said to Jon.

“Fine by me,” said Gerry, sliding into the second bed. He hadn’t brought pajamas, seeing as how he had stepped into another universe with nothing but the clothes on his back, but this would be far from his least comfortable night. 

Jon perched awkwardly on the other side of their bed. “Sorry,” he whispered. “I know you might feel differently about risking your life now that we know the world’s not at stake, and I hate knowing we might be playing into Elias’ plans.”

“I’ve risked my life for less,” said Gerry. “Besides, you’re stuck with me now.”

“Okay,” Jon whispered, voice strained.

“Hey. We’ll make it through this, all right? You said yourself, we’re cutting out the riskiest part. We’ll blow up the Circus and then you can ask Elias what the hell his game is. Or just flip him the bird, whichever.”

Jon smiled. “That is tempting.”

“I bet. Only met him once or twice, but he’s a smarmy bastard, isn’t he?”

“You have no idea.”

“Guys,” Tim groaned. “This isn’t a sleepover. Can we skip the gossip?”

“Sorry,” Gerry said, grinning at Jon. He’d never had a sleepover before. 

Jon smiled back and settled under the covers. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered.

“Me too,” he whispered back. He watched as Jon’s eyes slid closed. He felt calm, he realized, despite the dangers ahead. Safer than he ever had with Gertrude, that was for sure.

If anything, the mirror had done him a favor. Had Gertrude known what it would do? Or had she simply chosen her diversion at random? Would she be surprised to find his ashes? Would she even go looking?

Gerry took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. She was dead in this world, and this was his world now. He could let her go.

He had another Archivist to look after now. 


End file.
